Data Platform Architect in Cardiff

About Us

Admiral Money is the dynamic lending arm of Admiral Group, offering personal loans, motor finance, and homeowner loans since 2017. We’re building something special for our customers and are looking for curious, driven individuals ready to learn, take on challenges, and make an impact. We’re proud to be a certified Great Place to Work for over 25 years, with recognition for Women and Wellbeing. Our inclusive culture empowers everyone to Be You.

Need support during the recruitment process? Just let us know – we’re here to help.

Role Purpose

As a Data Solutions Architect within Admiral Money, the role focuses on designing and implementing enterprise‑grade data solutions that enable trusted, governed, and high‑quality data for consumption, analytics, and decision‑making. This is a hands‑on architecture role. Alongside defining standards and patterns, the role involves building proof‑of‑concepts, contributing to implementation, and working directly with code and infrastructure. You’ll need to understand how upstream operational systems produce data and architect solutions that take account of source system behaviours, data quality at origin, and integration complexity. This role ensures alignment with the organisation’s data and technology strategies, using the DCAM‑based capability maturity model and vendor‑neutral principles, with a focus on interoperability, scalability, and compliance.

What You’ll Do

• Design data pipelines and integration architectures that extract, transform, and load data from operational source systems
• Define and maintain enterprise data architecture standards aligned with DCAM principles
• Develop integration patterns for structured, semi‑structured, and unstructured data
• Create solutions and tooling roadmap aligned to analytical capabilities
• Partner with engineering teams to deliver cloud‑native data solutions
• Understand, influence, and document how upstream systems produce data, ensuring solutions account for source system behaviour, data quality at origin, and change data capture requirements
• Embed data governance, quality, and lineage capabilities into all solutions
• Promote metadata management and data cataloguing to build transparency and trust
• Act as a trusted advisor to business and technology teams on data architecture best practices
• Monitor emerging technologies and recommend appropriate approaches

Responsibilities

• Design and help deliver scalable, secure, and interoperable data solutions
• Build proof‑of‑concepts and reference implementations to demonstrate architectural patterns
• Support modernisation initiatives, including migration from legacy platforms
• Work with source system owners to understand data production methods and integration requirements
• Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and internal policies through technical controls
• Drive continuous improvement in data architecture maturity

Essential Skills and Experience

• Strong knowledge of data modelling (relational, dimensional, NoSQL) with hands‑on production experience
• Experience with cloud‑native data services such as S3, Athena, and Redshift
• Experience designing and building data pipelines using Python
• Knowledge of data integration patterns including batch ETL, real‑time streaming, event‑driven architectures, and API design
• Understanding of modern analytics tooling and platforms
• Familiarity with multiple cloud platforms and open‑source technologies
• Understanding of data governance frameworks (e.g., DCAM, DAMA) and experience embedding governance into technical solutions
• Ability to work across the stack, from source systems through to consumption‑layer data products
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders

Desirable

• AWS certifications
• Certifications in data architecture or data governance
• Experience with data cataloguing and lineage tools
• Knowledge of advanced analytics and AI/ML data enablement
• Experience using infrastructure‑as‑code tools such as Terraform

Technologies

• Hands‑on with a modern AWS‑based data platform, including: Cloud platform: AWS (S3, Glue, Athena, Redshift, Lambda, EventBridge), Power BI, dbt, Apache Airflow
• Languages: Python
• Infrastructure: Terraform (IaC), Kubernetes
• CI/CD: GitLab
• Integration: Event‑driven architectures, REST APIs, CDC patterns, batch file transfers

This role suits people who enjoy moving between solution design and implementation - this is not a diagram‑only role.

How To Succeed In The Role

Understanding what success looks like is important, particularly where job titles can mean different things across organisations. This section outlines what excellence looks like for this role at Admiral Money and is intended to support development and career growth.

As a Data Solutions Architect, Success Includes

• Delivering data solutions that meet business needs while meeting governance and compliance requirements
• Demonstrating a clear understanding of the full data journey, from source systems through transformation to consumption
• Building trust through technical credibility and hands‑on capability
• Designing scalable, maintainable solutions that evolve as needs change
• Collaborating effectively across teams and influencing architectural decisions
• Continuously improving data architecture maturity and promoting best practice
• Showing measurable impact through improvements in data quality, lineage, and accessibility
• Remaining hands‑on, maintaining the technical skills needed to build, troubleshoot, and validate solutions

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We’re committed to fostering a people‑first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service. Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave. We’re proud of our people‑first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We’re fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics. Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work‑life balance.

As a Disability Confident Leader, for candidates with a disability or long‑term health condition, that opt into the Disability Confident scheme, we’ll invite a fair and proportionate number of applicants that meet the essential requirements of the role to the first stage of our selection process. If you need any adjustments or support with your application or during the recruitment process, just let us know.